Several turns down the road,
through switchgrass, the paths like so
many answers, you take the
trail to where the lake lies like
black milk. Ducks stitch the water,
moving where the water moves.
You say, start anywhere; just
talk. It’s big, bottomless, I
say. Twilight runs its hands on
the water’s face, long shadows
of clouds sewn on the water,
the spinning souls of leaves. Is
it bigger, you ask, than a
breadbox. It was a guessing
game you played with the children,
their cheeks bright with questions as
they called into the new night,
what’s a breadbox. You ask, is
it darker than a pocket.
Day quitting the water then,
taking out all that had been
left of the light after it
came to us, which is the grief
of being: the hunger that
wakes us. And then only the
weave of breathing between us,
closer, nearly, than the night.
Becky Kennedy is a linguist and a college professor who lives with her family in
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in a number of journals; her
poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared on Verse Daily.